An Aboriginal community is seeking an apology after graves were wrongly exhumed.

ABC News

Land owners in the Lake Tyers Indigenous community in eastern Victoria have been angered by a number of grave desecrations.

The community in East Gippsland says it wants an apology after the remains of at least one individual were exhumed by accident, and then covered over without ceremony.

In another incident, one elder says she had to stop trees being planted on the graves of her family members.

Government officials have confirmed to the ABC that remains were disturbed at a graveyard at Lake Tyers in November last year.

Community members believe the remains belonged to a well-known man who died about 20 years ago.

Charmain Sellings, who lives in a house not far from the site, was one of the first on the scene.

Ms Sellings said a young man was kneeling over a hole next to a digger being operated by a second man.

She said he went to tap on what he thought was a rock, but was actually a skull.

"They didn't see any bones until I got up there and realised there was a skull inside the hole they dug up and I realised they re-dug a grave," she said.

"It sent shivers up my back. I was really quite emotional about it."

The remains were put back into the hole by the mechanical digger and covered over.

Community upset with remains' treatment

News of the grave having been disturbed quickly spread around the town.

One of the local elders, Aunty Elvie Bull, gathered with others at the community's administration centre.

"The group of people that we met with down around the administration building were very upset," she said.

Ms Sellings is among many others in the community who say there should have been a proper reburial service, and an apology.

"There should have been a written apology or get the community together and apologise to the community for this happening," she said.

History of disrespect towards culture

Lake Tyers, a small town of about 200 people, was one of the first Indigenous communities in the country to be granted a form of native title.

But the town has no elected council and there is no local representation of any kind - for almost a decade they have been governed by an appointed administrator.

It is the first time Lake Tyers owners and residents have spoken about this incident, but not the first time the community has complained of disrespect.

Gippsland's most senior elder, Aunty May O'Rourke, says she had to stop workers planting trees on her family's graves in the town's older cemetery.

"My dad's grave and my brother ... and I saw two trees there that they planted where the graves are, and I went off at the white bloke who was getting some of the young people to ... plant trees all around," she said.

The community has also been angered by what is happened to a sacred, lakeside site for mens' business.